Chapter 12 Entrance to the Ghost Realm
"What? He's not dead??"
Ji Shi looked on incredulously: "He's already in his coffin and he's still not dead?"
Chu Jianshan nodded slightly and said to Ji Shi, "Don't believe me? Come closer and take a look."
When the funeral procession passed by them for the fourth time, Chu Jianshan asked Ji Shi to listen to the sounds coming from the coffin.
Ji Shi was naturally afraid, but curiosity drove him to move forward slowly. However, he was moving too slowly; the procession had almost passed by before he had taken three or four steps.
Chu Jianshan finally couldn't stand it anymore and pushed him away with a palm strike. Ji Shi was so pushed that he lost his balance and fell directly onto the coffin.
This was the first time Ji Shi had ever done something so outrageous, and he was so frightened that he tried to get up, but a piercing sound suddenly stopped him.
The sound was coming from inside the coffin, but it was impossible to tell exactly what it was; it sounded like a sharp object scratching against a hard wooden board.
Then, slowly, human voices came through: "Help... Help me... Someone please save me..."
Ji Shi was so frightened that he took several steps back, panting heavily, because he knew what that piercing sound was—it was the sound of someone scratching a coffin lid with their fingernails, and the person inside had been trapped and died.
If you look closely, you can see traces of blood in the seams of the coffin; these must be from the person's worn-out fingers.
"There are...there are living people inside!"
Ji Shi exclaimed and ran towards Chu Jianshan and the others.
Chu Jianshan knew, of course, that there was a living person inside. This person had died on the way to his funeral, and the four corners of the coffin had been nailed shut. The person who designed all of this clearly wanted to suffocate him to death.
Cheng Yuan stood to the side, his hands naturally alternating in front of his chest, and slowly said, "He couldn't even die a quick death. How much did that person hate him?"
"That's not the point," Ji Shi turned to look at Cheng Yuan, his face full of despair. "Shouldn't the point be, where exactly is this?!"
"The Spirit Realm," Chu Jianshan suddenly interjected from the side.
"Wh...what? Where??"
"To be more precise, it's the entrance to the spirit world."
Chu Jianshan's words also brought back some distant memories for Cheng Yuan. Chu Qingyuan had told him about this place when he was a child.
The spirit world, also known as the ghost world in folklore, is the place where people temporarily exist after death and before reincarnation. In fact, the spirit world and the world of the living are not completely separated, but are connected.
The entrance to the spirit world opens once a year around the fifteenth of July, connecting it to the mortal realm. The location of this entrance is not fixed, but this year it is here.
Chu Qingyuan had previously wondered how there could be a village in such a foggy mountain area, which was not a place where people could live.
Moreover, he had never heard of any Ghost Mountain Village in Furong Town before. Now it seems that the entrance to the spirit world opened here, and people saw the scene inside, which led to the misunderstanding caused by the spread of rumors.
If he hadn't explained, Ji Shi could have fooled himself into thinking those events were coincidences. But now that he was certain he had entered the spirit world, he was filled with utter despair. Even though his legs were so weak he could barely stand, he still turned and tried to run away.
"I...I just remembered I left something at the inn. See you later!"
Ji Shi suddenly turned around and ran, wondering why Chu Jianshan and Cheng Yuan weren't catching him this time, when he saw a scene that made him collapse.
The road he had come from was now completely covered by thick fog. There used to be only one road, but now there were so many forks in the road that he couldn't count them all.
Ji Shi turned around, almost bursting into tears, and said desperately, "What happened...?"
“We’ve gone too deep.” Chu Jianshan walked toward him with his arms crossed and said, “If we were only at the entrance, it would be easy for us to get out, but now it’s too late.”
"Then...can we still get out?"
"Not necessarily, let's take it one step at a time."
The word "however" was enough to make Ji Shi faint. He took several deep breaths before he could barely accept the fact.
But when he turned to look at Cheng Yuan and Chu Jianshan, the two of them seemed completely unaffected, showing no reaction whatsoever and remaining as calm as ever.
So Ji Shi straightened up, raised his head, and pretended not to be afraid. It wasn't just a small spirit world; he didn't believe he couldn't get out.
The three of them could only keep going forward. Along the way, they could see all sorts of people dying in all sorts of ways.
Chu Jianshan stared intently at each of them, Cheng Yuan looked straight ahead, while Ji Shi covered his eyes with both hands, not daring to look at anything.
After walking for an unknown amount of time, Chu Jianshan suddenly stopped, and Ji Shi, not seeing him, bumped into his back.
His voice trembled as he asked, "What's wrong? Have we reached the exit?"
Ji Shi slowly opened his eyes, only to see the exact same scene as before, and then everything went black again.
Cheng Yuan turned to look at the familiar funeral procession. He clearly remembered that he had always followed this main road and had never entered any side roads. How could he have encountered this procession again?
So he turned around and asked Chu Jianshan, "Are we back where we started?"
Chu Jianshan shook his head and didn't say anything, just stared in one direction.
Cheng Yuan followed his gaze and could barely make out the light of a candle in a room in the darkness.
He had a premonition that this was the end.
With a creak, the door was pushed open.
Chu Jianshan went in first, and as soon as his left foot crossed the threshold, an arrow flew towards him.
Chu Jianshan remained calm and unmoved, only whispering, "Cheng Yuan."
The next second, the Flowing Sound Sword rose up in response, blocking in front of him and splitting the arrow in two.
Cheng Yuan sheathed his Flowing Sound Sword, half-blocking in front of Chu Jianshan, and said, "Your way of treating guests is truly unique."
Before Ji Shi could figure out who he was talking to, he saw a lame man slowly walk out from behind the screen. He had a scar on his face that snaked down to his neck, which looked quite terrifying.
The man saw Chu Jianshan and his group, and his face immediately lit up with a smile, but the smile was somewhat strange, as if... he had seen his prey.
"It's been over a hundred years... I haven't seen a living person in over a hundred years, hahaha..."
The man's voice was hoarse and unpleasant, as if he hadn't spoken in a long time.
"Come...come, sit down!"
The man limped as he led them inside. The decorations inside were similar to those in the mortal realm: there was a table, quilts, and even two poorly cut paper-cut window decorations, faded with time.
"Where are you three from?"
“Furong Town,” Ji Shi answered quickly.
“Oh…that’s a nice place. I used to live there, how long ago…about five hundred years ago…”
Chu Jianshan then asked, "Have you been staying here for the past five hundred years?"
If he wasn't mistaken, this was the person guarding the entrance to the spirit world. However, he didn't expect that this person also came from the mortal realm.
The man nodded and said hoarsely, "Five hundred years have passed in the blink of an eye. Time always flies so fast."
"Oh, right!" The man suddenly seemed to remember something, and abruptly stood up, approaching them. He was somewhat agitated and stammered, "You...you want to know what's going on with those people outside? I can tell you!"
Chu Jianshan raised an eyebrow slightly. He was just about to ask when this person guessed his thoughts. However, an answer delivered directly to one's door is definitely not a good thing.
He and Cheng Yuan exchanged a glance, clearly realizing that the other had guessed what he was thinking, and neither of them spoke.
“Yes, yes! We want to know!” Ji Shi nodded vigorously beside him.
Chu Jianshan sighed and rubbed his forehead, not knowing what to say. Who exactly sent this silly child down the mountain?
"Hahahaha..."
When the man heard him say he wanted to know, he started to laugh eerily. As he laughed, the scar on his face shifted position, making it look rather unsightly.
"I'll... I'll tell you right now!" The man gripped Ji Shi's shoulders tightly, staring at him excitedly as he drew closer and closer.
Ji Shi was so frightened that she kept moving back, but out of politeness she couldn't just push the person away.
"These people... they're not real, they're all illusions!"
"An illusion?" Chu Jianshan frowned.
"Yes, it's all fake...fake! They were all unable to enter the Rebirth Pool for reincarnation because of their obsessions in life. Over time, these obsessions persisted, and they would keep reliving their moments of death at the entrance to the spirit world to prevent outsiders from entering."
"Then, does Your Excellency know how to get out?" Chu Jianshan asked again.
The man shook his head, indicating that he didn't know, because very few people could get in here; most of them ran away at the exit.
"One last question." Chu Jianshan raised his eyes and looked at the man. "What have you been eating for the past five hundred years?"
He came in and looked around. There wasn't a single food item from the mortal realm in the room, but the furnishings were clearly arranged according to the person's preferences in the mortal realm.
That means that although this person can no longer be called a human, at least he still has the same emotions and desires as people in the mortal world, which also means that he still has an appetite.
If someone has an appetite but no food, their appetite will grow stronger and stronger until they end up eating anything.
Sure enough, the man's emotions started to change. He stared intently at them, his Adam's apple bobbing as if he were swallowing something.
He kept repeating the same sentence: "I know, you all know, you should be punished."
Chu Jianshan pulled Ji Shi back slowly, while Cheng Yuan drew his Flowing Sound Sword and stepped forward to block the two of them.
Chu Jianshan suddenly understood. In fact, even if people from the mortal realm accidentally enter the spirit realm, they can still return. However, they cannot know the laws and regulations of the spirit realm, and once they violate the rules, they will be punished.
He guessed that the punishment was to be "eaten" by the man in front of him, in order to satisfy his appetite, which had grown for over a hundred years.
No wonder this man kept enticing them to ask questions and was so eager to give them the answers.
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